Part Two of Three (strongly recommended that you go in sequential order. It has been years since my parents forced me to sit in front of the Tele and watch The Sound of Music but the traumatic experience still lingers on in my temporal lobe: the reverberations of Maria Von Trapp bellowing out "start at the very beginning, its a very good place to start)."
Facebook Five Hundred Challenge Update:
175 Friends. 3 days left. 325 friends needed. How are my chances looking? Not so good. Who knows, sometimes the dark horse is the one with the kick.
WOD Miasma:
1. Nonoxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere.
The concept of the perpetual chase after self-gratification is the premise to his best selling novel, Infinite Jest. Or so I have been told. The book is not easy to digest and the finish line being over one thousand pages away, makes it even more ominous. I read the first one hundred pages and then it sat around for a couple weeks before I took the initiative to take it back to the library (the library was closed and it was too large for the drop box).
I don't feel right recommending something I haven't read -at least only one tenth of it (Note: this is a tangent. Feel free to skip to the end of the parentheses and continue on. In no way will this information impact your overall comprehension of this post. Your going to read it anyway, aren't you? As soon as you tell someone they don't have to do something, they suddenly want to. Why do you think that is? Voice your thoughts in the comment section. The story: I used to work in a bookstore where employees would talk to the customers -recommending books as if they had read them. They actually did it quite well.
One day we got a book order and I opened a box to find a book called How to Talk about Books you haven't Read. It looked like a book that could attract some attention, so I decided to put it on the display case at the checkout -not that I had any authority to do this. A couple days later, I was working with a fellow employee, a teenage boy of 17. We were in a conversation and a man walked up and set a New York Times on the glass and made eyes with my book. He picked it up, turned it around, and looked at the back where it gave a short summation of the novels (most upwards of six hundred pages) that would be covered: Moby Dick, Ulysses, War and Peace, etc
As I had planned, it instigated a conversation about how people BS books. The ultimate irony was that when the man asked about the book, my fellow employee, who had not yet read the book (I am unsure even if he had any intentions of doing so) took it upon himself to give the man an executive summary. Also, if you don't like tangents, write that in the comments as well or if you think I'm bad at telling stories). So in short, I try not to recommend books I haven't read. I do recommend reading his compilation of his journalistic works, Consider the Lobster and his creative New York Times article on the tennis champion, Roger Federer.
Although Wallace loved the game of tennis, playing it was anything but a refuge. Instead, it was only volleying the ball into another court of self-consciousness. One can feel his discomfort as Terry aggrandizes his junior tennis career referring to him as a 'tennis champion', he quickly interlocutes, "I was not - I deny steadfastly that I was a champion, I played competitive tennis on a regional junior level, I was not a champion, I don't want anyone from my hometown to hear me profess the word champion." Humble yes, but an undertow of something more was being swirled to the surface; it was almost a fear of being called something he wasn't. Was he reverting back to the ordinary? Was he leaving me to solo the journey as the sole patient diagnosed with this unordinary fear? Gross rephrases her compliment, "okay, you were a darned good tennis play," and then gives a good humored laugh as if to suggest with certainty that by rephrasing it, the case has been closed. It hasn't. Her serve will be returned. The interviewee not even content with 'darned good' debases himself once again, correcting her: "I was decent by competitive standards."
Instead of tennis being an asylum, he brought tennis into the game of life.Although it isn't mentioned in the abridged version of the interview (I think he might talk about it in the complete 1997 recording), he explains how he uses the accouterment of tennis to circumvent any explanation he would have to provide for the beads of sweat coagulating on his forehead. The diversion worked but his panic attacks remained. All at the expense of having to harbor the habiliments of a tennis racket and gym towel: the tennis racket gave him an excuse for the sweat exuding into his shirt, and the towel, solidifying his wardrobe while also serving a more utilitarian purpose.
And it is this self-consciousness that kept him from attaining the self-proclaimed ranks of 'champion' and instead, being merely a good and decent one. It was his high school teacher that broke the news to him, "you got-a bad head kid." He knew his coach was right, he just didn't know how to fix it. He acknowledges to Terry that he could've gone further if not for his crippling self-consciousness. But even after his early retirement, he still uses the instrument that precluded him from his potential to contemplate its place in sports: "Look, one of the great mysteries about athletes and why I think they appear dumb to some of us -they seem to have this ability to turn it off, I don't know how many of your listeners have this part in their brain, but ah.. what if I double vault on this point... what if I miss this free throw..." (say nothing more, I know it all too well) Its a part in my brain that played a prominent position in my fledgling years as a little leaguer -Wallace and I have yet another matching point: deuce: deuce.
It is this debilitating self-consciousness that probably occurs more often than not. Or maybe not. Maybe him and I are the only ones to have ever experienced it. For me it started as I was spawning into the prepubescent age; conveniently, just as I was matriculating into the Majors. As I climbed up through the ranks it remained at my side, like a glove to a hand. But my fascination with the mind didn't start until I got some space from it (which is now...maybe). I remember one day so vividly: I made four jaw dropping catches (by anyone's standards) -two that were grounders, one hit just left of the first baseman and the other in the gap near second base. The two fly balls were hit into the shallows of the outfield and despite the sun ingesting the wavering ball -the red stitches barely audible, my back bending, my body contorting and then sensing the seams being coughed up at the last moment, like a man from the Matrix, I leaned back far enough that my extending arms could arch beneath the ball. Willie Mays didn't even have a name for this one. This is the day I remember. But if you were to ask any of my fellow sunflower seed spitting teammates, they would tell you a different story from a different game. This story will have to wait until tomorrow...
Lastly, please do comment. I am trying to figure out how to show everyone's comments (well, right now there is only one) so that it can become more of a discussion, a conversation so to speak.
Nice... If anyone has any ideas on how to do this, I have already tried clicking on embedding comments in post but this hasn't worked and I have also tried tweaking some things in the template. Also to no avail.
Good night moon,
Jimmy
Facebook Five Hundred Challenge Update:
175 Friends. 3 days left. 325 friends needed. How are my chances looking? Not so good. Who knows, sometimes the dark horse is the one with the kick.
WOD Miasma:
1. Nonoxious exhalations from putrescent organic matter; poisonous effluvia or germs polluting the atmosphere.
2. a dangerous, foreboding, or deathlike influence or atmosphere.
Context as used by John Updike in article on John Cheever - New Yorker style: "On the other hand, all this biographer's zeal makes a heavy, dispiriting read, to the point that even I, a reader often enraptured by Cheever's prose and an acquaintance who generally enjoyed his lively company, wanted the narrative, pursued in methodical chapters that tick past year after year, to hurry through the menacing miasma of a life which, for all the sparkle of its creative moments, brought so little happiness to its possessor and to those around him."
Context as used by John Updike in article on John Cheever - New Yorker style: "On the other hand, all this biographer's zeal makes a heavy, dispiriting read, to the point that even I, a reader often enraptured by Cheever's prose and an acquaintance who generally enjoyed his lively company, wanted the narrative, pursued in methodical chapters that tick past year after year, to hurry through the menacing miasma of a life which, for all the sparkle of its creative moments, brought so little happiness to its possessor and to those around him."
The concept of the perpetual chase after self-gratification is the premise to his best selling novel, Infinite Jest. Or so I have been told. The book is not easy to digest and the finish line being over one thousand pages away, makes it even more ominous. I read the first one hundred pages and then it sat around for a couple weeks before I took the initiative to take it back to the library (the library was closed and it was too large for the drop box).
I don't feel right recommending something I haven't read -at least only one tenth of it (Note: this is a tangent. Feel free to skip to the end of the parentheses and continue on. In no way will this information impact your overall comprehension of this post. Your going to read it anyway, aren't you? As soon as you tell someone they don't have to do something, they suddenly want to. Why do you think that is? Voice your thoughts in the comment section. The story: I used to work in a bookstore where employees would talk to the customers -recommending books as if they had read them. They actually did it quite well. One day we got a book order and I opened a box to find a book called How to Talk about Books you haven't Read. It looked like a book that could attract some attention, so I decided to put it on the display case at the checkout -not that I had any authority to do this. A couple days later, I was working with a fellow employee, a teenage boy of 17. We were in a conversation and a man walked up and set a New York Times on the glass and made eyes with my book. He picked it up, turned it around, and looked at the back where it gave a short summation of the novels (most upwards of six hundred pages) that would be covered: Moby Dick, Ulysses, War and Peace, etc
As I had planned, it instigated a conversation about how people BS books. The ultimate irony was that when the man asked about the book, my fellow employee, who had not yet read the book (I am unsure even if he had any intentions of doing so) took it upon himself to give the man an executive summary. Also, if you don't like tangents, write that in the comments as well or if you think I'm bad at telling stories). So in short, I try not to recommend books I haven't read. I do recommend reading his compilation of his journalistic works, Consider the Lobster and his creative New York Times article on the tennis champion, Roger Federer.
Although Wallace loved the game of tennis, playing it was anything but a refuge. Instead, it was only volleying the ball into another court of self-consciousness. One can feel his discomfort as Terry aggrandizes his junior tennis career referring to him as a 'tennis champion', he quickly interlocutes, "I was not - I deny steadfastly that I was a champion, I played competitive tennis on a regional junior level, I was not a champion, I don't want anyone from my hometown to hear me profess the word champion." Humble yes, but an undertow of something more was being swirled to the surface; it was almost a fear of being called something he wasn't. Was he reverting back to the ordinary? Was he leaving me to solo the journey as the sole patient diagnosed with this unordinary fear? Gross rephrases her compliment, "okay, you were a darned good tennis play," and then gives a good humored laugh as if to suggest with certainty that by rephrasing it, the case has been closed. It hasn't. Her serve will be returned. The interviewee not even content with 'darned good' debases himself once again, correcting her: "I was decent by competitive standards."
Instead of tennis being an asylum, he brought tennis into the game of life.Although it isn't mentioned in the abridged version of the interview (I think he might talk about it in the complete 1997 recording), he explains how he uses the accouterment of tennis to circumvent any explanation he would have to provide for the beads of sweat coagulating on his forehead. The diversion worked but his panic attacks remained. All at the expense of having to harbor the habiliments of a tennis racket and gym towel: the tennis racket gave him an excuse for the sweat exuding into his shirt, and the towel, solidifying his wardrobe while also serving a more utilitarian purpose.
And it is this self-consciousness that kept him from attaining the self-proclaimed ranks of 'champion' and instead, being merely a good and decent one. It was his high school teacher that broke the news to him, "you got-a bad head kid." He knew his coach was right, he just didn't know how to fix it. He acknowledges to Terry that he could've gone further if not for his crippling self-consciousness. But even after his early retirement, he still uses the instrument that precluded him from his potential to contemplate its place in sports: "Look, one of the great mysteries about athletes and why I think they appear dumb to some of us -they seem to have this ability to turn it off, I don't know how many of your listeners have this part in their brain, but ah.. what if I double vault on this point... what if I miss this free throw..." (say nothing more, I know it all too well) Its a part in my brain that played a prominent position in my fledgling years as a little leaguer -Wallace and I have yet another matching point: deuce: deuce.
It is this debilitating self-consciousness that probably occurs more often than not. Or maybe not. Maybe him and I are the only ones to have ever experienced it. For me it started as I was spawning into the prepubescent age; conveniently, just as I was matriculating into the Majors. As I climbed up through the ranks it remained at my side, like a glove to a hand. But my fascination with the mind didn't start until I got some space from it (which is now...maybe). I remember one day so vividly: I made four jaw dropping catches (by anyone's standards) -two that were grounders, one hit just left of the first baseman and the other in the gap near second base. The two fly balls were hit into the shallows of the outfield and despite the sun ingesting the wavering ball -the red stitches barely audible, my back bending, my body contorting and then sensing the seams being coughed up at the last moment, like a man from the Matrix, I leaned back far enough that my extending arms could arch beneath the ball. Willie Mays didn't even have a name for this one. This is the day I remember. But if you were to ask any of my fellow sunflower seed spitting teammates, they would tell you a different story from a different game. This story will have to wait until tomorrow...
Lastly, please do comment. I am trying to figure out how to show everyone's comments (well, right now there is only one) so that it can become more of a discussion, a conversation so to speak.
Nice... If anyone has any ideas on how to do this, I have already tried clicking on embedding comments in post but this hasn't worked and I have also tried tweaking some things in the template. Also to no avail.
Good night moon,
Jimmy
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